Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience (22 page)

Recorded Data of the 344 Patients in the Study

Number of resuscitations: 509

Mean age: 62 years

Number of men: 73 percent

Number of women: 27 percent

Religious: 72 percent

Secondary education: 66 percent

Prior knowledge of NDE: 57 percent

Previous NDE: 4 percent

Fear of death: 2 percent

First myocardial infarction: 86 percent

Resuscitation in hospital: 234 patients (68 percent)

Duration of cardiac arrest
<
2 minutes: 190 patients (81 percent)

Duration of unconsciousness
<
5 minutes: 187 patients (80 percent)

Resuscitation outside hospital: 110 patients (32 percent)

Duration of cardiac arrest
>
2 minutes: 88 patients (80 percent)

Duration of unconsciousness
>
10 minutes: 62 patients (56 percent)

Duration of unconsciousness exceeding 1 hour: 104 patients

Artificial respiration in long-term coma: 12 percent

Short-term memory defects: 41 patients

Results of the Prospective Study

Percentage of NDEs

If patients reported memories of the period of unconsciousness, the experiences were coded according to the Weighted Core Experience Index (WCEI; see chapter 2 for more information). The higher the number of elements reported, the higher the score and the deeper the NDE. Our study found that 282 patients (82 percent) had no recollection of the period of their unconsciousness whereas 62 patients (18 percent of the 344 patients) did report an NDE. Of these 62 patients with memories, 21 patients had some recollection; having experienced only a few elements, they had a superficial NDE with a low score. A total of 18 patients had a moderately deep NDE, 17 patients reported a deep NDE, and 6 patients had a very deep NDE.

Compared to results from retrospective studies, the much lower percentage of NDEs here is conspicuous. It is a direct consequence of the study’s prospective design and of the fact that we looked at a group of much older patients. Only 12 percent of patients had an experience with a score of 6 or more (a moderately deep, a deep, and a very deep NDE). This is known as a core experience because in retrospective studies this score of 6 marked the cutoff point for defining a remembered experience as an NDE. If we set the percentage of NDEs against the number of resuscitations, we are left with only 5 percent. Women, who had a higher mean age, reported significantly deeper NDEs, as did people who had been resuscitated outside the hospital and patients who had been extremely fearful prior to their cardiac arrest.

Another striking finding was that people with a deep NDE, and especially those with a very deep NDE, were significantly more likely (P
0.0001) to die within thirty days of their cardiac arrest although medically they were no different from the other patients. I cannot offer an adequate explanation for this. However, it is possible that after a deep or very deep NDE people lost their fear of death to the extent that they were able to let go and leave their bodies. We know that people can exercise a certain control over the time of their death. For example, if a family is very sad to see mother or father die and observes a tearful twenty-four-hour deathbed vigil, this person will be unable to let go. The patient will usually die when the family is momentarily absent. And when somebody is close to death but waiting for a daughter to arrive from Australia, then this person will defy all medical prognoses and not die until the daughter has arrived several days later. Anybody working in a hospital or hospice has come across cases like this.

Identified NDE Elements

The table “Frequency of NDE Elements” shows which common elements of a near-death experience were reported in our study and how frequently they occurred.

Half of the patients with an NDE were aware of being dead and had positive emotions; 30 percent had a tunnel experience, observed a celestial landscape, or met with deceased persons; approximately a quarter had an out-of-body experience, communicated with “the light,” or saw colors; 13 percent had a life review; and 8 percent perceived the presence of a border. In other words, all known NDE elements were reported in our study, with the exception of a frightening or negative NDE.

Frequency of NDE Elements in the 62 Patients

Factors That Did Not Influence the Occurrence of NDEs

Are there any reasons why some people have but most people do not have any recollection of the period of their unconsciousness? To answer this question, we compared the recorded data of the 62 patients with an NDE with the data of the 282 patients without one. To our big surprise, we identified no significant differences in the duration of the cardiac arrest, no differences in the duration of the period of unconsciousness, and no differences in whether or not seriously ill patients who remained in a coma for days or weeks after a complicated resuscitation needed intubation for artificial respiration. Neither did we find differences among the 30 patients who had a cardiac arrest during electrophysiological stimulation (EPS) in the catheterization laboratory and whose heart rhythms were always reestablished through defibrillation (electric shock) within fifteen to thirty seconds. So we failed to identify any differences between patients with a very long or a very brief cardiac arrest. The degree or severity of the oxygen deficiency in the brain (anoxia) appeared to be irrelevant. The administered medication played no role either. Most patients suffering a myocardial infarction receive morphine-style painkillers, while people who are put on a ventilator following a complicated resuscitation are given extremely high doses of sedatives. A psychological cause, such as the infrequently reported fear of death, did not affect the occurrence of an NDE, although it did affect the depth of the experience. Whether or not patients had heard or read anything about NDE in the past made no difference either. Any kind of religious belief, or its absence in nonbelievers and atheists, was irrelevant, and the same was true for the standard of education reached (see the table that follows).

Factors That Did Not Influence the Occurrence of NDE

Factors That Do Influence the Occurrence of NDE

Factors that do affect the frequency of an NDE are an age below 60 and a first myocardial infarction, in which case the patients were also younger than the mean age of 63. If patients required several resuscitations during their hospital stay, they were more likely to report an NDE. Remarkably, all patients who had experienced an NDE in the past reported them significantly more often in our study.

Factors That Influence the Occurrence of NDE

P is the probability of a statistical significance

P
0.05 denotes a significant difference

A complicated resuscitation can result in a long coma, and patients who have been unconscious on a ventilator for days or weeks are more likely to suffer short-term memory defects caused by permanent brain damage. The longer the coma, the greater the risk of these cognitive problems, which also occur after severe concussion or a stroke and which may wipe hours, days, and sometimes even weeks from a patient’s memory.
⁵
These patients reported NDEs significantly less often, which suggests that a good memory is a prerequisite for remembering an NDE.

Conclusions of the Prospective Study

The possible causes of NDE outlined so far, that is, physiological or medical causes (such as anoxia), psychological (such as fear of death), or pharmacological (causes related to medication), could not be corroborated by this first large-scale prospective study of NDE.

We were particularly surprised to find that medical factors failed to explain the occurrence of an NDE. All the patients in our study had been clinically dead, and only a small percentage reported an enhanced consciousness with lucid thoughts, emotions, memories, and sometimes perceptions from a position outside and above their lifeless body during resuscitation. If this enhanced consciousness had a physiological cause, such as oxygen deficiency in the brain (anoxia), all patients in our study should have reported an NDE. They had all been unconscious because of their cardiac arrest, which resulted in a loss of blood pressure and the cessation of breathing and all body and brain-stem reflexes. The severity of the clinical picture, such as a lengthy coma after a complicated resuscitation, also failed to explain why patients did or did not report an NDE, except in the case of lingering memory defects. The psychological explanation is improbable because most patients experienced no fear of death preceding their cardiac arrest; its onset was so sudden that they failed to notice it. In most cases they were left without any memories of their resuscitation. This is borne out by Greyson’s study, in which the subjective data of resuscitated patients show that most of them did not even realize they had had a cardiac arrest.
⁶
The situation is comparable to fainting. When people regain consciousness after fainting they have no idea what happened. We were also able to exclude a pharmacological explanation, as the medication administered had no effect on whether or not patients reported an NDE.